'Engaging women in IT is critical', Tara Wisniewski

Tackling women in IT head on at the 'The Power and Promise of Female Leadership'.

Standing in front of the ACS SA Leaders Lunch – titled The Power and Promise of Female Leadership – Managing Director Advocacy and Public Affairs at ISACA, Tara Wisniewski, asked “What does female leadership mean?”

The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is a more effective style of leadership. According to Wisniewski female leaders are rated more positively than their male counterparts, they’re more inspirational and motivational and, often, they’re credited with significant net revenue increases.

“Women are better at bold,” she says, explaining that these bold women leaders flourish in “traditionally male dominated fields” including R&D, manufacturing, sales, engineering, and – of course – ICT.

However, not all of the statistics and figures Wisniewski presented the audience were this positive.

“When you think about the numbers on the leadership, it doesn’t match up with the research about women’s leadership qualities,” she continued, explaining that fewer than 25% of the international IT workforce are women and this is about the same number as in 2015 despite efforts to get more women into the industry. In some sectors it’s far less, revealing from the recent launch of the Australian National Cyber Security Strategy that women make up less than 3% of the Australian cyber workforce.